Oil and gas wells are sometimes drilled into subsurface reservoirs made of sandstone or sand. Sand control is often used to help keep the sand in the reservoir and out of the produced oil. This may be particularly important in horizontal wells in oil sands reservoirs.
Common sand control techniques include slotted liner, wire wrapped screen, and others.
Once installed subsurface, it may be difficult to evaluate the performance or relative performance of a sand control technique.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a method and apparatus for characterizing sand control inserts.